'Frankenstein' Mummies Are a Mix of Corpses

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Mummies found off the coast of Scotland are Frankenstein-like
composites of several corpses, researchers say.

This mixing of remains was perhaps designed to combine different
ancestries into a single lineage, archaeologists speculated.

The bodies were first unearthed in 2001 during excavations
beneath the foundations of an approximately 3,000-year-old house
on South Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast
of Scotland. The building was one of three roundhouses at Cladh
Hallan, a prehistoric village named after a nearby
modern graveyard. The site was once populated in the Bronze
Age from 2200 B.C. to 800 B.C. — scientists were digging here to
learn more about this era in Britain, where little was known
until recently.

The researchers had found what were apparently the remains of a
teenage girl and a 3-year-old child at the site. However, two
other bodies looked especially strange — those of a man and a
woman found in tight fetal positions as if they had been tightly
wrapped up, reminiscent of " mummy
bundles " seen in South America and other parts of the world.
These bodies were apparently mummified on purpose, the first
evidence of deliberate mummification in the ancient Old World
outside of Egypt. [ 8
Grisly Archaeological Discoveries ]

Evidence for mummy mix-ups

Evidence of this mummification lies in how all the bones in both
these bodies were still "articulated" or in the same positions as
they were in life, revealing that sinew and perhaps skin were
still holding them together when they were buried. Carbon dating
these remains and their surroundings revealed these bodies were
buried up to 600 years after death — to keep bodies from rotting
to pieces after such a long time, they must have been
intentionally preserved, unlike the bodies of animals also buried
at the site, which had been left to decay.

Mineral alterations of the outer layer of the bones suggest they
were entombed in acidic surroundings, such as those found in
nearby peat bogs. Exposures to such bogs for a year or so would
have mummified them, stopping microbes from decomposing the
bodies by essentially tanning them in much the same way that
animal skin is turned into leather.

Ancient writings suggest that embalming was practiced in
prehistoric Europe, not just in Egypt. For instance, ancient
Greek philosopher Poseidonius, writing in about 100 B.C.,
"visited Gaul and recorded that the Celts there embalmed the
heads of their victims in cedar oil and kept them in chests,"
said researcher Mike Parker-Pearson, an archaeologist at the
University of Sheffield in England.

Bizarrely, the man's remains were composed of bones from three
different people, possessing the torso and limbs of one man, the
skull and neck of another, and the lower jaw from a third,
possibly a woman.

The researchers made this discovery of his
Frankenstein-like nature by analyzing his skeleton — for
instance, evidence of arthritis was seen on the vertebrae of the
neck, but not on the rest of the spine, revealing these parts
came from different bodies. Also, the lower jaw had all its
teeth, whereas those of the upper jaw were entirely missing, and
the condition of the lower jaw's teeth revealed they once
interacted with a full set of teeth in his upper jaw, showing
they originally belonged to another man. [ Image
Gallery: Scanning Mummies for Disease ]

To see if the woman's skeleton was also a composite, the
researchers analyzed ancient DNA from the skull, lower jaw, right
upper arm and right thighbone. This revealed that the lower jaw,
arm bone and thighbone all came from different people. Data from
the skull was inconclusive. (Oddly, the upper two teeth next to
her front teeth had been removed and placed in each hand.)

The first composite was apparently assembled between 1260 B.C.
and 1440 B.C., while the second composite was assembled between
1130 B.C. and 1310 B.C. "There is overlap, but the statistical
probability is that they were assembled at different times,"
Parker-Pearson said.

Although one Frankenstein-like mix-up of body
parts might be an accident, "the second instance makes this
unlikely," Parker-Pearson said.

Mummification apparently took off in Britain about 1500 B.C. "at
a time when land ownership — communal rather than private, most
likely — was being marked by the construction of large-scale
field systems," Parker-Pearson told LiveScience. "Rights to land
would have depended on ancestral claims, so perhaps having the
ancestors around 'in the flesh' was their prehistoric equivalent
of a legal document."

"Merging different body parts of ancestors into a single person
could represent the merging of different families and their lines
of descent," Parker-Pearson said. "Perhaps this was a prelude to
building the row of houses in which numerous different families
are likely to have lived."

Mummies? Britain?

When the bones were first discovered, Parker-Pearson admitted,
"some archaeologists were rightly skeptical," as mummification in
the British Bronze Age was pretty much unheard of.

Even Parker-Pearson would've been skeptical of the finding, had
he not studied the bones. "But since then, we have applied a
battery of scientific methods, of which the ancient DNA analysis
is the latest," he said. "Together with archaeological evidence
from excavation, these analytical results make a fairly
unassailable case for mummification and recombination."

"I don't think it implies any links with ancient Egypt or other
distant civilizations at all," Parker-Pearson said about these
findings. "Mummification is simple enough to do in your own
kitchen, and has been surprisingly widespread among small-scale,
traditional societies throughout the world in recent centuries."

"Altogether, these results have completely changed our ideas
about treatment of the dead in prehistoric Britain,"
Parker-Pearson said. "Other archaeologists are now identifying
similar examples now that the breakthrough has been made —
beforehand, it was just unthinkable."

For instance, he said, what may be two examples of
human mummies from Down Farm in Dorset, excavated by Martin
Green in 2009, even have drill holes in the long bones,
suggesting that their limbs were strung together.

The scientists detailed their findings in the August issue of the
Journal of Archaeological Science.